Innovate Mississippi

Pointe Innovation Summer 2013 Issue

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FEATURE ARTICLE
Photo courtesy of USM/GCRL
Summer Field Program class aboard the R/V Hermes in the Gulf of Mexico.
DELIVERING THE CATCH OF THE DAY
MARINE TECHNOLOGY ENSURES SAFETY
A N D S U P P LY O F Y O U R F A V O R I T E C A T C H
By Sharon G. Morris
L
ong before you select a favorite fish from the local
market, someone working in the field of marine
science has invested many years of research to ensure
your selection of fish is safe and sustainable. And if the catch
includes Gulf shrimp, oysters, striped bass, sea trout or red
snapper, it is likely that someone is associated with the Gulf
Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL), a division of the University
of Southern Mississippi (USM) located in Ocean Springs.
Research at GCRL is multidisciplinary and applicationsoriented, focused on sustaining coastal and marine resources,
developing new marine technologies, and educating future
scientists and citizens. But managing those resources requires
a resource of another kind: economic investment.
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Pointe Innovation
"One of the biggest challenges in managing fisheries
resources across the country is the large need for sophisticated
scientific information to support it and the increasingly limited
government funding for academic sciences to fill that need,"
explained Eric Powell, Ph.D., director of GCRL. "That
disparity has created new avenues for funding, most of which
is coming out of the fishing industries."
Most recently, GCRL received funding from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) for the Science Center for Marine
Fisheries. The center, which opened this April, is an NSF/
University Cooperative Research Center housed at USM and
the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences. The center provides
an academic resource for the fishing industry throughout the